Late arrival in San Juan

Day 4  Wednesday, January 23, 2019   San Juan, Puerto Rico

Here we are touching our first ground since NYC, as we disembarked in The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. We arrived 90 minutes late, at 4:30 pm, which did impact our city tour due to rush-hour traffic and the Capitol building being closed to us.

Earlier in the day, despite turns of rain and wind, we were able to get some sun.

For lunch, we had to wait in line, but did get into the Savor main dining room. That was the only time we had lunch there due to the crowds. From then on, it usually was Shenanigan's but sometimes the buffet. We concluded early on that we preferred the smaller ships, because this one with 4200 passengers meant too many for the main dining rooms to handle, as well as the elevators and other popular venues such as the poolsides when the weather was nice.

 During this lunch, we played Someone Feed Phil.

As we walked off our ship, this old galleon replica was at the dock. It looked like Columbus's Pinta, Niña, or Santa Maria.

We took a three-hour bus tour around San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital city. We did not take too many pictures. This statue of St. John the Baptist, the city's namesake (San Juan Bautista), was at our 2nd stop across from the Capitol.

The Capitol. We were supposed to take a tour, but it was closed by the time got there, 90 minutes later than we were supposed to. Our first stop was at a beach, but it soon started raining so we all hopped back onto the bus.

Prior to the stops, we drove around old San Juan and some new parts, while listening to the history and highlights. Puerto Rico was colonized by Spain following the arrival of Columbus in 1493. It was contested by French, Dutch, and British, but remained a Spanish possession for the next four centuries. It became a U.S. territory after the 1898 Spanish-American War, and they became American citizens in 1917.

Our guide mentioned that the massive Bacardí Distillery in San Juan produces 135,000 gallons per day! But then he said a different distillery, Don Q, is the local rum favorite with its 150-proof version.  He also said that the national cocktail was piña colada, and the national sport was cock fighting. Despite cock fighting's popularity, it has just been outlawed by a U.S. national law that will take effect in Dec, 2019. The locals are NOT happy about this!

Our guide talked about the devastation from Hurricane Maria in Sept, 2017. Recovery efforts were extremely slow, with the electrical grid completely destroyed, and over 200,000 residents had to move to Florida, including our guide.

There was a bakery we passed, Kasalta Bakery, and the guide told this story: Obama and Biden visited there during their 2011 visit (1st presidential visit to PR since 1961). Obama insisted on waiting in the line to purchase his "medianoche" sandwich, and he paid for it ($7.50) out of his own pocket. Then, he insisted on sitting at a table only when there was an available seat, along with the locals. The store owner was so excited, he renamed the sandwich "President Sandwich" and upped the price to $15!

Our bus passed old and new neighborhoods, and the guide pointed out expensive condos owned by Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, both of whom had led hurricane relief efforts.

One thing we learned was about the Puerto Rico Trench, the largest and deepest trench in the Atlantic located to the north at the boundary between the Caribbean and North American plates. It is 170 mi long, and 27,600 feet deep at its deepest point. 

Our final, ending stop, was in Plaza Colón. This statue is, of course, Christopher Columbus. Janet's picture is better:

We wandered into various tourist shops, and bought the only souvenir from our entire cruise - a little kitty cat carving. In the shop was this real kitten:

Isn't that a cute badcat?  Also in Plaza Colón was Teatro Tapia, a theater dating from 1832 and still in use. For well over 100 years it was the center of cultural life in the city.

The guide had said that the ship was so close, that we may decide just to walk back to it and skip the remainder of the tour. He said that if we were not back to the bus by 7:15, he would assume we had walked back and he would depart for the remainder of the tour. I just assumed this meant there was going to be more touring, but... The guide waited a long time past 7:15 for people to return to the bus, plus he went off calling for the missing people. But when we finally did proceed without the missing guests, we drove all of two minutes to reach the ship and end the tour. Hahaha

Once back on the ship, we ate dinner at the buffet, and then watched the comedy show in the theater. We really liked the one comedian named Phil, and were glad we had reservations to see him at the comedy club the next night. After the show, we returned to enjoy the Howling at the Moon Dualing Pianos.